It’s a scene played out daily in grade-school classrooms: a kid breaks the rules but acts innocent, the teacher lacks the nerve to confront him, and he gets away scot-free.

But what’s benign for children can cause serious damage when global corporations are the perpetrators and the economic security of tens of thousands of families is on the line. Sadly, right now the U.S. government, like the feckless teacher, is meekly turning the other cheek while a giant foreign company unapologetically breaks trade rules to tilt the playing field its way.

Outrageously, Uncle Sam actually may reward this company’s rule-breaking behavior to the tune of $35billion in American taxpayer money – and 50,000 good-paying jobs for European workers.

That’s right. Within weeks, maybe even days, the Pentagon is expected to award the massive contract to build new Air Force refueling tanker planes to France-based Airbus rather than U.S.-based Boeing, despite clear evidence that Airbus was able to underbid Boeing only because it accepted $5 billion in illegal subsidies to help build the airframe for its tanker.

Workers and small-business owners around the country, including subcontractors in the South Bay, nervously await the Pentagon’s decision. With unemployment sky high and millions of families struggling to get by, those 50,000 aerospace jobs across the country would bring a significant shot in the arm for dozens of communities. Here in California alone, about 4,500 jobs are at stake.

That’s not reason enough to award the contract to Boeing. In a global economy, it’s often a good idea for government agencies to accept bids from foreign companies, to get the best possible deal for the American people. But competitions require ground rules to ensure that they’re fought on a level playing field.

That sense of basic fair play is missing in the tanker competition.

Under Pentagon procurement rules, officers overseeing the competition use dozens, sometimes hundreds, of criteria to assess each bidder’s ability to meet the contract specifications on time and on budget. But they do not take into account whether a bidder, or its home government, cheated on established trade agreements to make its bid more attractive.

It’s like an umpire blithely calling balls and strikes while one team’s pitcher scuffs, scratches and spits on the ball, and the other team’s pitcher plays it straight. When one side has an unfair advantage, it doesn’t matter how carefully the other rules are followed. The game is rigged.

This problem is not new. Airbus and its parent company, EADS, have been rigging competitions for decades in cahoots with the European governments that partly own them. Their goal, proudly and often repeated, is to take a big chunk of the wide-body aircraft market away from Boeing and the U.S. workers who used to dominate it. And subsidies are the ace up Airbus’ sleeve, the subtle but clear advantage that allows for below-market bids – according to no less an authority than the World Trade Organization, which, responding to a lawsuit from the U.S. trade representative, agreed that European governments provided billions in illegal subsidies to EADS over the years. Those subsidies have helped the Europeans gain an estimated 65,000 aerospace jobs at American workers’ expense.

But the tanker contract marks the first time that the Europeans made the audacious attempt to wrest a major military contract away from Boeing (which is barred, in many cases, from bidding on European defense contracts). Pentagon officials and members in Congress initially welcomed the competition, thinking it would keep Boeing honest, but ironically, Airbus’ role has been an embarrassment for supporters of fair government procurement.

In 2008, the Air Force awarded the tanker contract to Airbus but was forced to rip it up after the Government Accountability Office discovered several significant errors – including Air Force officials telling Airbus about changes to the tanker specifications without informing Boeing. The Pentagon requested a new round of bids last year, but only after delaying the competition start to accommodate Airbus’ request for more time. And in the fall, it was revealed that Airbus looked at proprietary information about Boeing’s bid, accidentally sent by the Pentagon. (Boeing immediately returned the corresponding Airbus data without looking at it.)

The evidence is clear: if Airbus “wins” the tanker contract, and its 50,000 jobs, it will have done so only by bending the rules. Congress can fix the problem by passing a law ordering federal agencies to discount the value of illegal subsidies, and other trade violations, when evaluating bids from foreign competitors.

It’s high time this common-sense law was passed. Treating major defense contracts like child’s play does not serve the country, our military, American taxpayers or working families.

Hank Lacayo, a U.S. Air Force veteran, is state president of the Congress of California Seniors.

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